


The Secret Life of Bees

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autistic Sherlock, Gen, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes and Bees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 02:34:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'John finds it ironic that the most emotion he has ever seen Sherlock show is to a dying insect'</p>
<p>It takes John Watson a little while to discover Sherlock Holmes' obsession with bees; but when he does, he wonders how he ever could have missed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret Life of Bees

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to Moffat, Gatiss and the BBC.  
> A/N: My first ever fic posted on ao3!

**For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom -** _William Shakespeare_

It is only a few weeks after John first moves in to 221B that he arrives home from Tesco to find his flatmate perched, stock still, on the windowsill of their flat.

He doesn't think much of it. After all, Sherlock himself had warned John about his sometimes strange and inexplicable behaviour.

_Sometimes I don't talk for days on end,_ he had drawled lazily.  _Would that bother you?_

It hadn't bothered John then, and it doesn't bother him now. So what if Sherlock wants to sit stock still on a cramped window ledge, lanky limbs drawn up to his chest, for a few hours?

_Let him get on with it,_ John decides, dumping the shopping bags on the well-worn table. As long as the detective is quiet (and not blowing anything up), John doesn't care what he does to amuse himself.

 After a few hours in his room, painstakingly slowly typing up their latest case on his blog, John heads down the stairs for a cup of tea to find Sherlock still sitting where he had left him. The man looks like he hasn't moved a muscle since that morning.

_What the bloody hell is he up to?_

Determined to find out what could possibly be holding his flatmate's attention for this amount of time, John creeps quietly up behind Sherlock and peers nonchalantly over the man's shoulder at the rainy London street below their window, trying to make out any interesting shapes through the sheets of falling rain.

Nothing unusual there, as far as John's well-trained, marksman's eyes can see.

_Then what is he - oh._

Sherlock isn't actually staring out of the window at all, but rather at the small, furry, gently buzzing creature that is currently sharing the window sill's space with him.

'Is that a bee?' John asks.

He doesn't really expect Sherlock to reply, his friend having ignored him up to this point, but he does, after a pause.

'Obviously,' he drawls, not taking his gaze off of the insect currently making its way up the glass. 'Apis mellifera, part of the family Apidae, genus Apis. Native to Europe, Asia and Africa, introduced to North America in the 1600's. There's around 28 subspecies-'

Suddenly, Sherlock cuts off, perhaps noticing the baffled look on John's face at the barrage of information and scientific words. His face, which had just begun to become animated with the joy of lecturing on a subject he’s really interested in (the face usually only seen when he’s explaining his findings at a crime scene), returns to its usual stoic blankness. He turns away again, and even though Sherlock's emotions are hard to read at the best of times (John determinedly believes that they do exist, no matter what Sherlock claims to the contrary), John senses that he has hurt Sherlock's feelings in some way.

_Sherlock mustn't be used to people actually listening to him when he's like this,_ John realises.  _Most people would probably have told him to shut up by now._

_John feels inexplicably sad at this revelation._

'Hey,' he murmurs, poking his flatmate gently in the shoulder. 'Don't stop, it's fascinating stuff, really. Just, you may have to dumb it down a bit for me. Idiot, remember?'

Sherlock quirks a small smile at that, then pokes John back in the arm.

'It's a honeybee, John'

'Oh' John replies. He pauses, and then asks 'Why are we watching a honeybee, then?'

Sherlock huffs out a quiet laugh, his breath fogging a faint cloud on the glass. 'Bees are admirable creatures' he answers, as if that explains everything.

'Ehh…, okay. Aren't you going to let it back outside?'

The detective turns his head to look at John, his expression clearly saying  _What are you, an idiot?_

'Not in the pouring rain, John,' he mutters, turning back around to once more settle his gaze on the tiny, furry creature. 'I'll let it out when it stops, of course'

'Okay'

John watches the bee with Sherlock for a while. Then he watches Sherlock watch the bee.

Finally, John moves away to make that almost-forgotten cup of tea, not looking at Sherlock again until the rain has stopped and he glances up to see Sherlock carefully brush the bee out the window, solemn grey eyes following the bee's path towards the sky.

*…...*

After that, John notices Sherlock's 'bee mania' (as he has taken to calling it in his head), more often.

They are just funny little things, really.

Sherlock, in a sudden blur of blue scarf and greatcoat, rushes forward towards Anderson with a cry of 'Don't kill it!', scooping an almost-flattened bee into a cup and gently whooshing it out of the open window in Scotland Yard. Anderson mutters 'Why not?' under his breath, Donovan's nasty 'Freak!' following soon after.

John and Lestrade, in unison, turn to glare at them both while Sherlock's back is turned away.

Sherlock, later that same day, grimly squishes a wasp with a heavy book, replying with a shrug and a 'They kill bees' to John's unspoken question.

(Sherlock grins at John's loud guffaw of laughter at this latter incident and his exclamation of 'Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective - exterminator of London's wasps!')

John comes home from the clinic one day to find Sherlock sitting outside on the steps to the flat, gazing sorrowfully at a large, fuzzy, but obviously dying bumblebee as it crawls over his fingers and towards his arm. The detective gently, almost reverently places the bee inside of the nearby railings, out of the path of any pedestrian's feet, before casting one last sad look at it and standing up to follow John into the flat.

(John finds it ironic that the most emotion he has ever seen Sherlock show is to a dying insect)

John tries not to laugh as he trots behind Sherlock in Regent's Park one summer's afternoon, thinking about how they must look to the other visitors to the park - one grown man, at least six feet tall and into his early thirties, wearing Dolce and Gabbana shoes and a Belstaff Milford coat, blindly following a small worker bee as it flies around the park, gathering nectar, and another man, shorter, right behind him, giggling into his hand as he tries to keep up with the other's longer strides.

It is surreal, but then most moments in Sherlock Holmes’ company are.

*…...*

A short while after the Hounds of Baskerville case, John texts Mycroft (somewhat guiltily), asking if Sherlock has some form of autism.

It would certainly explain a lot of his friend's behaviour.

He receives an affirmative from Mycroft, who explains that Sherlock had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome when he was very young.

John remembers just a bit about autism from his medical school days.

Autistic people usually have something that they obsess about, memorize facts and information about. For some it is train timetables, constellations, weather statistics, lines from films or song lyrics.

John doesn't even need to text Mycroft about what subject Sherlock may have obsessed over when he was a kid.

John knows already.

*…...*

Three years later, Sherlock returns from the dead.

John will never, he believes, ever get over the shock of seeing his best friend standing, dishevelled and smiling, on the doorstep of his new flat.

Sherlock, after the initial shouting and punching and swearing that he is subjected to (and eventual hug) spends long hours explaining how he had done it and how Moriarty's network is gone, destroyed forever.

John, even though he knows he shouldn’t, moves back in to 221B with Sherlock two weeks later. Suddenly, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are flatmates again.

And now, Sherlock is bored.

England is still in an uproar at the great detective's miraculous return, and people are being (understandably) slow to begin asking Sherlock for his help on cases again.

Sherlock hates it, of course.

John glances up at Sherlock one day as the man lies upside down on the sofa, his once-again jet-black curls brushing the floor. He looks like he is determined to prove the possibility of dying from sheer boredom and frustration.

John sighs.

'Sherlock, the blood's going to go to your head if keep that up'

No answer.

John almost sighs again- but then a plan forms in his mind.

'Hey,' he calls over. Sherlock's head turns slightly towards him. 'Want to go to the park to see the bees?'

John laughs out loud as Sherlock twists himself into a seemingly impossible shape in order to straighten up quickly.

The detective looks at him, warily; face almost hidden by his mop of curls.

'Really?'

John grins at him, feeling indescribably glad to have his best friend back.

'Yeah' he replies. 'Come on'

Sherlock's answering smile almost splits his face from ear to ear.

*…...*

**The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams -** _Henry David Thoreau_

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!


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